“For me and for the whole human race there is but one thing needful, and that is the knowledge that eternal being is within, around, about us and we are it.” Spiritualism? The ignorant will say with a sneer. Yes, in the highest, broadest and deepest sense. It sustained this lonely woman on her journey to a great city to work out her life’s problem, and after she was there it gave her patience and confidence. It made it impossible for her to seek the river, and enabled her to wear a cheerful face and carry a hopeful heart, while her little store of money dribbled down to a few lonesome dollars. Without this rock of faith those long, lonely days of seeking and waiting would have been unbearable. Sometimes she sat in the public squares looking compassionately upon the pitiful people about her. The homeless, the hopeless, the hungry, the despairing, the weary, the ailing, the suffering, the broken-hearted were there, some in rags and some in fine garments. Within each one ached and ate the canker of a wretchedness they tried to hide from happier souls who passed them by. Cartice read their misery by the light of past suffering, and yearned to say to them: “Awake! You are in a dark dream. The conditions that trouble you are unreal--mere illusions, and touch not your true life at all. You are gods every one, but unaware of your divinity. One day the dream shall pass and you shall know this.” But the etiquette of civilization forbade it. We see our fellow beings suffer and perish from some wound in the soul, yet approach them not. All she could do was to send out to them, through the silent waves of thought, messages of hope and good cheer. In those days of striving and waiting and studying the swarming life about her Mrs. Doring turned over the economic problem in her mind many times. Curious industrial system, that condemns idleness and yet makes the search for employment bitter and hard! The two arts which held her chance were hedged about in such a way that the most she could do was to shoot an arrow from afar and trust that it might stick. Nor was she unaware that many other arrows were flying from other archers, each one diminishing the chances of the rest. CHAPTER XVIII. BOHEMIA’S HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. “Work thou for pleasure; paint or sing or carve The thing thou lovest, though the body starve. Who works for glory misses oft the goal; Who works for money coins his very soul. Work for the work’s sake, then, and it may be That these things shall be added unto thee.” --_Kenyon Cox._ One day a miracle happened,--at least Cartice Doring considered it a miracle. She was swinging to a strap in one of the always dirty and frequently crowded cars of the elevated railroad--when, as the train went ricketing round a curve she was flung against a man behind her with such force that both well-nigh fell to the floor. Before she could apologize, a familiar voice said: